Boston a novel
affidavit to the Governor as his own affidavit, and have Sibley called
before the Governor--which would, of course, open up the story. Armed
with that dire threat, Gardner Jackson went to see the managing editor
of the _Globe_, under whom he had worked for seven years, and they
had their first quarrel in that long period. The managing editor said
that they were playing an unfair trick upon his paper, that it was a
dirty thing to do, and so on. He would not give any decision; but that
same afternoon Frank Sibley came to Thompson’s office and affixed his
signature!
XII
The supersalesman of automobiles had announced that he would not
appoint any commission; the law did not permit him to delegate his
authority, but required him to make the decision himself. But Cornelia
and her blue-blood friends went on with their quiet intrigue, and one
day there appeared in the papers a letter signed by the Bishop of the
Blue-bloods and four of his flock, appealing to the Governor for an
advisory commission. Just as Cornelia had foretold, it was impossible
for a mere automobile dealer to withstand such pressure; he changed his
mind. As a great man in public life, he of course did not announce that
he had changed his mind; he merely announced that he was going to do
what he had previously announced he was not going to do.
More intrigue, to induce him to name the right commission! Dignified
established persons, wholly without taint of contact with anarchism,
atheism or draft-dodging, called upon the Governor, or wrote letters,
pointing out to him that there was one eminent citizen who would be
trusted by all right-minded persons in New England to give a just and
impartial opinion regarding the guilt of the two accused men--and
that was “Mr. Lowell”! It was the “middle minds” who were inspiring
this intrigue; Cornelia, partly of her own impulse, partly led by her
friends, had come to center her hopes upon the august President of
Harvard University. “Radical” friends, including her granddaughter and
her grandson-in-law, laughed at her for believing that Mr. Lowell would
prove himself more free from prejudice than any other millionaire. But
they had nothing in particular against him, and nobody to prefer, among
those whom the Governor would consider. “So let dear old Grannie go
ahead,” said Betty; “it keeps her hoping.”
Grannie went ahead, and in due course an announcement came from the
State House; the Governor had appointed a commission consisting of A.
Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, Robert Grant, retired
judge of the Probate Court, and Samuel W. Stratton, President of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A vast and unanimous sigh of
relief went up from the Back Bay. At last the terrible problem would
be settled, and settled right! It would be dealt with by gentlemen,
instead of by vulgarians and political tricksters, corrupted officials
and police agents! A new atmosphere would be brought into the case,
and the world would see that Massachusetts brains and breeding still
counted for righteousness and dignity! Two of the three members of
the commission were registered blue-bloods; the third, though he came
from the west, had been adopted and placed in charge of the great
school which, next to Harvard, was Boston’s pride, the place where
the technicians of her giant industries got their exact and efficient
training.
XIII
Vanzetti was now in Dedham jail, and Cornelia made a trip to carry
him the good news. Needless to say, he did not know the President of
Harvard University, but if Nonna said that he was a good and great
man, Bart was willing to believe it. But she must not forget that it
was hard for a rich man to rise above the ideas of his class. Was Mr.
Lowell a very rich man? When the prisoner learned that he owned huge
cotton-mills, and enjoyed an income of close to a million dollars a
year from the ill-paid labor of wage-slaves, the prisoner said, “He
must be a very great man if he do joostice to anarchistas.”
Bart preferred to converse about Proudhon’s “Peace and War,” which he
was translating. Here was his idea of a great man. They discussed the
formula, “Property is theft”; and Bart showed a letter to the Vanguard
Press, to which he was sending the manuscript of the translation. “By
gosh, don’t loss it!” was his injunction.
Also he had been doing more work upon his novel, “Events and Victims.”
It was in reality a very short novelette: the story of an immigrant
worker in America; but alas, no magazine would publish such material!
Bart thought that if some one would send a copy to Russia, it might be
published there--or possibly made into a moving picture. In America,
of course, they wanted moving pictures about the rich, or in praise of
riches. Bart had put a passage about the “movies” into his novel, and
he read it now to his friend.
A curious circumstance: in nine or ten weeks he was to die, in the
midst of terrific public clamor; and the chiefs of the moving picture
industry would hold a meeting and resolve that the name of Vanzetti
was to be forever barred from the screen, and that all pictures which
had been taken of the case should be immediately destroyed. They, the
propaganda chiefs of capitalism, knew who their enemies were, and no
mistake about it. Said Bartolomeo Vanzetti, speaking to the suppressors
of his fame:
“I went out and walked towards the theater, hoping to see Johnny whom I
knew to be passionately fond of moving picture shows. That night they
were showing a screen version, a fragment of one of those romances
which distort truth and realities; falsify history; provoke, cultivate
and embellish all the morbid emotions, confusions, ignorances,
prejudices and horrors; and, purposely and skillfully pervert the
hearts and, still more, the minds. The characters of these morbid
melodramas are always of two opposite types, one very good, the other
very bad. The good ones are the good folks who are always good, always
do good, are always right, and in the end always triumph. The others
are always bad folk, who are always wrong, always do evil and finally
pay the penalty. Just the reverse of life!
“Thus meditating, I reached the theater. Of course it was, as usual,
crowded to the doors. The common people, being all heart, with little
brain and less knowledge, are passionately interested in such senseless
stories, and not a scene escapes them. They develop a wild and
unreasoning affection for the unreal characters of the unreally good,
whose hatreds and loves, risks and triumphs they share, and fervid
hatred for and resentment against the unreal characters of the unreally
bad gang. They lose their heads, weep, sigh, laugh, smile, fear, hope
and throb, and, forgetting their cross of infamy, leave the theater
more stupid than when they entered it.”
XIV
The Advisory Commission could not get to work until after the college
commencements were over. But meantime the secret hearings before the
Governor went on, and in the offices of the defense committee several
typewriters clicked all day and most of the night, and sacks full of
letters, leaflets, and pamphlets went out. The barriers set up by the
capitalist press were broken down; even the great news agencies had
to spread the world’s protest. The flood of letters rose higher in
the Governor’s office, and while the secretary still boasted of the
promptness with which he burned them, they did not fail to produce an
effect--especially when reinforced by the explosion of bombs in front
of United States embassies in Europe, and the crashing of window-glass
in Argentina.
Cornelia wrote letters, and carried on long telephone conversations,
and traveled about visiting businessmen and bankers in their offices,
and wealthy ladies in their homes on Beacon Hill and Commonwealth
Avenue. For the most part they listened with the patience which her
age and station demanded; they promised to study the case, and often
did so. Now and then they told her that while they appreciated her
sincerity, they knew that she was being imposed upon by scoundrels, and
that it would be wiser if she did not force them to discuss the matter.
Cornelia knew what to expect; she had watched Boston for a couple
of generations, and read of it still earlier. In any moral issue,
officialdom had always been on the side of reaction, and the broadcloth
mob had supported it--even to the extent of putting a rope about the
waist of William Lloyd Garrison and dragging him through the streets.
But always there had been a small minority of choice spirits who had
come out in opposition, and made the glory of the city’s history. Among
these had been the oldest names and the bluest blood; and so it was
now. There appeared an open letter addressed to Governor Fuller, asking
a list of pertinent questions, and the signers of that letter included
the best that Massachusetts had to show in every form of culture. Nor
did these people stop with writing letters; they wrote their names
upon checks, and gave time and thought to the case--everything that
civilized human beings could do to make headway against brutal power.
The Thornwell family offered a miniature of the whole Back Bay.
Cornelia crusading, and her granddaughter Betty ready to turn into a
militant, and get her head broken by the police; while on the other
hand the aged Abner Thornwell, oldest member and nominal head of the
family, was sitting paralyzed in his wheel-chair, boiling like a steel
crucible about to explode. Great-uncle Abner--so he was always referred
to, because of the children--resembled his sister-in-law Cornelia in
one thing, that he could not think or talk about anything but Sacco
and Vanzetti; his conversation, a monologue on account of his complete
deafness, resembled a verse-form with a refrain--“Burn them! Burn them!”
Abner insisted upon writing bloodthirsty letters to the Governor and
to the newspapers. This would have been a scandal, because everybody
knew of Cornelia’s part in the case; and since she had taken it up
first, family etiquette declared it to be hers. So the Scatterbridge
family, with whom the old man resided, entered into an elaborate
conspiracy to suppress his letters; secretaries, chauffeurs and
attendants, butlers, footmen and maids--everybody had to be warned
to bring the old gentleman’s letters to Mr. James instead of mailing
them! In the end the victim found out about that, and worked himself
into such a fury that the family was afraid he would die on the spot.
He had to be allowed to mail a letter to the Governor, and to have an
acknowledgment, as his rank and station required; James having sent his
secretary to explain the circumstances and see that the letter was not
given to the press.
XV
Between these two extremes the other members of the family were
distributed here and there. Henry Cabot Winters had become quite
sympathetic toward his “Bolshevik mother-in-law”; he gave it as his
legal opinion that she had come out of her seven years’ struggle with
unexpected glory. Regardless of whether her wops were innocent or
guilty--and Henry said he had no opinion--she had proved to all the
world that they had not had a fair trial. Who could have foreseen
that luck would oblige her with such incidents as the making of bogus
citations by “Web” Thayer, and the annihilation of poor “Dean Wigless”
in the columns of the _Transcript_? Manifestly, the judicial system
of Massachusetts had slipped up. While the great lawyer would not do
anything about it, nor even say anything about it, he would furnish his
mother-in-law with first-class legal advice free of charge.
Also Quincy Thornwell had been impressed by the interest taken in the
case by men of standing in the financial world, such as John F. Moors,